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<title>Worst Things by OwnerOfAllTears</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057011">Worst Things</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwnerOfAllTears/pseuds/OwnerOfAllTears'>OwnerOfAllTears</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>1917 (Movie 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1917, Gen, Guilt, Mentions of Death, One Shot, Regret, mentions of fighting, short fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 12:02:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>646</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057011</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwnerOfAllTears/pseuds/OwnerOfAllTears</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story on Joseph's POV following the failed attack of the 2nd Devons and his realization about his brother's death</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>No Romantic Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Not Just Another War Movie</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Worst Things</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Blake couldn’t do it. There was no possible way for him to do it. Something like this… there is no right way to do something like this. To deliver these type of news. Lieutenant Joseph Blake had been in the war since the very beginning. He had been one of the first in his town to enlist. The first of his group of friends and school classmates. In the army he had survived, thrived, succeeded, awarded as a hero for doing unspeakable things, horrible crimes he would never admit out-loud        </p><p>He had been the one to argue the strongest against Tom’s enlisting. Little sweet Thomas could not possibly be a soldier, he was too young, too pure for the horrors of the war. Clearly the war propaganda about honour and glory had bought him in. He still could recall the fight that ensued in his house that night. The screaming, the tears, the pleas. His mother quietly sobbing in the sofa, her face hidden behind her handkerchief. Tom arguing that it was his duty, while Joe screamed back that he didn’t know what he was getting into. It all ended with Joe smacking a vase off the table, the sound of shattering crystal snapping them out of the thoughts. He had never been prone to anger outbursts, but this situation had escalated too quickly. His baby brother couldn’t go to war, no. The life there would crush him and shatter him, if the German artillery didn’t do it first. But at the end Tom won. Tommy always got what he wanted; and this time was no exception. The youngest Blake went off to the war, to fight the Huns. And now he was dead.</p><p>After the call off of the battle, tending the wounded and reorganizing the men they had left, Lieutenant Blake had time to think. The tropes had moved back into the trench and closer to the forest, allowing the man to sneak away into Croisilles Wood for a few moments. He sat behind some large rocks, big enough to hide his frame, with a piece of paper and a pen in his lap. That Schofield boy had asked to write to his mother, but Blake felt it was his duty to be the one to write first. Before the soldier, before the arrival of an official letter; a letter cold and impersonal, written in a typewriter and copied a million times, leaving an empty space to scribble the name of the fallen soldier. His little Tom deserved better than that.</p><p>Not a word had been laid out yet, but the piece of paper was already stained with tears. Joseph cried in a way that he never thought he’d be able to cry. He hadn’t just lost a brother. Tom was his brother, his son, his best friend and his confident. The two shared things that no one else knew. Tom had always promised to Joe to be the best confident and take his brother’s secrets to the grave. And he had kept his promise.</p><p>Somehow he found the strength to write the hardest letter he’d ever have. The ink blotched when his tears disrupted the writing, making the words smudged and dirty, but that somehow reflected his feelings far more than a perfectly neat and polished writing. He was grieving like he never thought he would. Was it possible to keep going with this type of pain? How could he face this war anymore, when the person he was fighting it for no longer existed? Was there happiness in his future when the sweetest soul this world had ever met was gone?</p><p>Lieutenant Joseph Blake had done some hard things. Things that hurt his heart, things that no man should ever be forced to do. But nothing, not one thing he had experienced, compared to having to announce his brother no longer existed.</p>
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